Join the Navy & see the World

(From the top of a mountain!)

When I joined the navy, as a boy telegraphist, in 1948, the postings one could get to shore establishments abroad included such places as Bermuda, Malta, Simonstown (South Africa), Mauritius, Gibraltar, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Ceylon and Rangalla.

Rangalla? You won’t find it on your Daily Telegraph map of the world, in fact you will need a map to the scale of about 1 inch to the mile of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon).

Rangalla is, or was, a small village/boutique roughly in the middle of Sri Lanka and you may well ask what a Royal Naval Telegraphist would be doing there.

In 1952/3 I was on the staff of the Commander in Chief East Indies (C in C EI) based in Trincomalee in the top NE corner of Sri Lanka. Signal traffic between the C in C EI, ships of the EI squadron, Admiralty and the rest of the world had to pass through the area wireless station which was at Negombo, near Colombo, in the bottom SW corner of Sri Lanka. The link between Negombo and Trincomalee was by teleprinter and overland cables. Unfortunately these cables were often broken, either by wild life or the locals, so some bright spark came up with the idea of having a VHF (Very High Frequency) radio relay between the two. VHF ground waves, have a limited distance they can travel, note how relatively close your TV aerial is to the transmitting aerials, Stockland for instance, depending on both the power of the transmitter and the height of the aerial. in this case not only was there a fairly long distance between Negombo and Trincomalee, some 350 miles, but there just happened to be a range of mountains some 5,000 feet high in the way. So the decision was made to put a relay station on top of the mountain (well, a couple of hundred feet below the summit). But how to get the equipment up there? It wasn’t just radio sets (which were quite large) and aerials (wire aerials strung between masts up to 50 feet high)  but great big diesel generators (two) to produce the electricity, fuel to run the diesels, accommodation (a large wooden building with sleeping/living accommodation at either end, radio shack in the middle. The cookhouse and toilet etc. was put on the side of the shack.

On the bottom quarter of the mountain was a tea plantation which was fairly easy to negotiate but from then on it was primary jungle all the way up. A path was cut through this jungle and with the help of some elephants and dozens of natives the equipment was eventually put in place. I should add here that this was all done long before I came on the scene.

The whole set up was to be known as Rangalla Wireless Station. Of course it then required someone to look after it, ensure the equipment worked, that the aerials remained in an upright position etc. so two RN telegraphists were detailed to man the station. It also required someone to maintain and run the diesel generators (outside our scope) so a Ceylonese civilian was posted there to do that job. We were also allocated a  Royal Ceylonese Naval steward/cook who looked after all our cooking/eating requirements and kept the living and sleeping quarters clean and tidy. In addition, two native coolies climbed the mountain every morning and tended to such things as fetching water from a nearby stream and emptying the Elson toilets they then went all the way down again in the evening. We also had a 15 cwt truck and civilian driver in the village which was available to us whenever we required. We didn’t have the luxury of a bathroom so we rigged up a makeshift shower in the stream by building a small dam and running a couple of scaffold poles from it to a point where we could stand beneath the water coming out. This water was so cold that you could only remain under it for a few moments at a time, get yourself wet, pop out and soap down, back in and rinse off.

Life in Rangalla Wireless could get very boring if you couldn’t dream up ways to keep yourself occupied. We played endless games of half penny (or in this case, Rupee) table football, darts, cards and all the usual board games. Our only contact with the real world was to disconnect one of the radio links and then wait until someone from either Trincomalee or Negombo to go to their transmitters to see what the problem was or listen to the World Service of the BBC or ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission), our favourite was the ABC as they often played request records for us.  Occasionally we would take a couple of machete's and go into the jungle and chop down a tree. It was on one of these forays into the jungle that we discovered that there was not one single item of first aid equipment in the station, not even a plaster, Joe my colleague at the time, had slipped and severely cut his hand on his machete and had to go all the way to Trincomalee (some 150 miles!) to have some stitches put in, we did ask a local Ceylonese doctor at first to help but for some reason or other he declined (some doctor!) The Senior Medical Officer was very displeased that no one had thought of putting a first aid box in place and when Joe returned from Trincomalee he brought with him a huge quantity of first aid equipment, all very well but apart from putting on a  plaster or a bandage we didn’t have a clue as to what all the rest of the stuff was for, in those days if you were not in the medical field you didn’t need to know about first aid! Every fourteen days, one of us would be driven into Trincomalee for a couple of days to replenish stores and have a break, play sport and have a few beers etc. About every third or fourth trip we would take a very large suitcase and go into the base library and ask the librarian to just fill it up, anything would do.

Once a month one of the staff officers of the Commander in Chief, often accompanied by his wife, would visit to give us our pay (only officers and gentlemen had bank accounts then!) these Staff Officers looked forward to this duty as it meant a nice leisurely trip in a chauffeur driven staff car, and although they knew that they had to somehow climb up the mountain, at the end of the day it meant a short drive into Kandy and spend a pleasant few days there with their wives,maybe visiting the Temple of the Tooth, all at Navy expense!  They also had to pay all the coolies who had at some time or other during the previous month brought something up the mountain for us (we were not under any circumstances allowed, by the locals, to carry anything up as it would deprive them of earning a few rupees. Some coolies would walk to the next village (about 5 miles) to collect our mail which would be left Poste Rente (i.e. await collection). They would then bring the mail back and even if it was just one letter climb up the mountain to our station, their name would go into the book and they would be compensated when the staff officer arrived. Their big moment of course would be when we returned from Trincomalee with stores, mysteriously the coolies would somehow know when our truck would arrive and would be waiting for us in order to obtain some item to carry up the mountain.

It was rumoured, although I have no proof, that one of the previous occupants of Rangalla Wireless Station had to be transferred to the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar (Portsmouth) because he was suffering from some sort of mental illness brought about by boredom! 

My stay at Rangalla was relatively short (10 months) compared to others because, having previously passed my exams for higher rate, Leading Telegraphist, I had to return to Trincomalee and do work which was more in line with my newly acquired promotion. In those days, when a sailor went overseas, especially shore sides, he was gone for a little longer than the present day matelots are. I initially set sail  from Plymouth on HMS Sparrow which was to be involved in the Korean War, but after a few months off the Korean coast it was realised that HMS Sparrow which had come from the tropics of the Caribbean to the frozen wastes of Korea  (and yes the sea really did freeze over in places) was not suitable for those conditions and so had to reduce her compliment from a full wartime one down to peacetime numbers and consequently many of the ships company were drafted to various other ships or shore establishments etc., hence mine was to Trincomalee in Ceylon, in all I served 18 months in Ceylon added to that the period aboard HMS Sparrow and in total I was away for about 2 ½  years.

As a matter of interest, there have been many debates and theories about when skiffle was first heard Some will say it was Lonnie Donegan, others have different theories. My theory is that it was first heard in The China Fleet Club, Hong Kong, in 1952,  played by a group of sailors from HMS Cockade and calling themselves the Cockatoos. Their instruments were, a washboard, oil drum with broomhandle and piece of string, spoons and a guitar, and they played great music.

David Hanson

Jufair